Interesting books, and news items about books and periodicals, particularly with respect to political and social issues. Since May, 2016, many of my larger book reviews have been put on a hosted Wordpress site; so now this blog emphasizes previews, interviews with authors, booklets, large periodical articles, and literary business issues. Note: no one pays me for these reviews; they are not "endorsements"!

First of all, let’s talk about the title. “Bream” is a kind of freshwater fish (not
necessarily “free fish”), and the title of the first of nine sections is “Bream
Gives Me Hiccups: Restaurant Reviews from a Privileged Nine-Year-Old”.

That section, which has about eight “reviews” (not exactly
Yelp style), not listed in the book TOC, is followed by eight more topical
parts, the longest of which is “My Roommate Stole My Ramen: Letters from a
Frustrated Freshman” (and that freshman surely is not Jack Andraka currently at
Stanford – see March 18). I had to look up “the food” (ramen) in Wikipedia. I
thought about slurping borscht in Ukrainian restaurants on 2nd
Avenue in the East Village near the Ninth Street Center back in the 1970s.

I should mention the most interesting of the reviews:
perhaps “Thanksgiving with Vegans”, or “Robert Frost Elementary School
Cafeteria” (when I substitute-taught, the cafeteria meals in the mid 2000’s in
northern VA were fat-filled and awful), or “The Ashram and Mom”, an intentional
community requiring deep ritualistic participation and banning cell phones. (I recall a 1970s book about the Hidden Valley
ashram in Peru on the Altiplano where all the men had to look the same, rather
like Franciscans.)

The other sections (like “Family”, “Dating”, “Self-Help”, “Language”)
are broken into little stores, a few of which are set up nineteenth-century
style in letters, and others are set up as dramatic skits (almost suitable for
FinalDraft), at least one of which is set up to look like verse or a poem for
literature class in freshman English (which even Jack has to take, despite
having written a book himself).

Sometimes Eisenberg really makes fun of the way we squirm at
sensitive issues, like the carnage in Bosnia during the Clinton years, or
female clitoral mutilation as a ritual in some African societies. At least once
he talks about male physical attractiveness – his – as he thinks women should
perceive it.

The common element in all of these morsels is a kind of “word
salad” on the way kids, tweens, and real teens (and college students and
emerging young adults up to the author’s age, now 32) seize on their
perceptions of the biased expectations they think the world has of them. He makes it look pretty much the same in the
straight world (which he inhabits) as the gay world I “live” in – because I
came from the straight world. I’ve done similar
writing, over longer narratives in one setting – like the first “fiction” story in my third “Do Ask, Do Tell” book
(check Amazon), pp. 209-256, a quasi-fictive account of my 1968 experience with
Basic Combat Training at Fort Jackson, SC.
There’s another book on this subject that did that, “The Sunshine
Soldiers”, by Peter Tauber, 1973, republished in 2003 by Higganum Hill Books.

Somehow this book reminds me of Thomas Carlye's experiemental "Sartor Resartus" (Dec. 2, 2013). The language does get explicit and sharp, but English professors might find Eisemberg's writing experiment interesting to teach.

And, by the way, when I lived in the Cast Iron Building in the 1970s, I was a few doors down from Grove Press.

Eisenberg is said to be negotiating a series of comedy videos to be sold on Amazon Prime, based on the book, maybe a bit like "The Power Inside" (TV, Spet. 13, 2013).

Wikipedia gives an interesting account of Mr. Eisenberg,
including his fostering of animals (especially cats) and vegan diet.

Links

About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

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